In Search of the Ultimate White LED

University of Georgia scientists believe they have taken an important step toward creating an LED that emits a warm-white light using a single light emitting material, or phosphor, with a single emitting center for illumination. One of the researchers on the project, Zhengwei Pan, an associate professor in the department of physics in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and in the College of Engineering, said in a posting on the UGA website, “Our material achieves a warm color temperature while at the same time giving highly accurate color rendition, which is something no single-phosphor-converted LED has ever been shown to do.”

The posting also said that because the material has a color rendering index (CRI) rating of 85 and a correlated color temperature of less than 4,000 kelvins, the material would meet two of the most important technical lighting criteria in determining which light sources are ideal for indoor lighting. In the photo here, Pan holds a prototype of what is thought to be the world's first single-phosphor, single-emitting-center-converted LED that emits a warm-white light.